EDITORIAL: Russia more than simply a nuisance

Friday

Mar 28, 2014 at 12:01 AM

President Barack Obama didn’t do much to make the American public feel secure earlier this week with his comments about Russia.

President Barack Obama didn’t do much to make the American public feel secure earlier this week with his comments about Russia.“Russia’s actions are a problem,” Obama said Tuesday at The Hague in the Netherlands. “They don’t pose the No. 1 national security threat to the United States. I continue to be much more concerned when it comes to our security with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan.”That must have made folks in the five boroughs sit up and take notice. There’s nothing like a rogue nuke in the backyard to set one’s nerves on edge.As it turns out, the president was mentioning one of any number of terrorist scenarios that he considers more likely than a confrontation with Russia. Perhaps the president should choose his hypotheticals a little more wisely or couch them in terms that let people know they don’t need to start heading for the bomb shelter immediately.Obama’s real concern seems to be wiping the egg off his face after his condescending comments — directed at his Republican opponent Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential campaign — that the 1980s were history and the Cold War was over. In the meantime, Vladimir Putin ripped his shirt off and began partying like it was 1979. He couldn’t care less about, as Secretary of State John Kerry put it, being on the wrong side of history.Obama is right that today’s Russia is not the Soviet Union of yesteryear, which spent vast sums in an arms race with the United States. The Russian military budget amounts to a modest sum when compared to America’s.But then again, it doesn’t need as much. Its aims are far more narrowly defined, and its ambitions don’t include being the world’s policeman.Obama called Russia a “regional power” and, in a sense, he is right. For now, Russia’s ambitions seem focused on the area directly adjoining it.The problem comes when you consider what is in Russia’s little neck of the woods. Turkey and Iran are close at hand, and both countries have significance to U.S. foreign policy. Then there are the former Soviet Republics, some of whom look to the west for support.And let’s not forget Eastern Europe. You can bet a significant number of the citizens in the former Warsaw Pact countries haven’tforgotten what it was like to be under the Russian thumb. Neither have the Baltic States.Russia might be a “regional power.” It might be no match for the United States in a stand-up fight. It won’t invade or attack the United States. But with a huge nuclear arsenal and a leader bent on expansion, Russia is more than the pesky nuisance characterized by Obama.We hope the president is now taking Russia and Putin more seriously than it sounded when he jabbed at Romney.